In the continuous casting of metals, such as steel, the melt is fed substantially continuously into a continuous casting mold and travels as a continuously cast strand along a guide over which the strand is cooled. The continuously cast strand may then be subdivided into sections of predetermined length and subjected to rolling or drawing with or without intervening cooling, soaking or other reheating processes.
At the start of each casting operation, it is known to use so-called starting chains which must be manipulated, i.e. fed into position and withdrawn from position, during each format change or change in the cross section of the strand to be produced.
The manipulation of starting chains during format changes in continuous casting installations is a time-consuming and complex problem requiring, heretofore, space-consuming apparatus which must be coordinated with a high degree of manual labor and hence requires a significant amount of time.
During this period, the continuous casting installation is at a stand-still so that the productivity of the installation is directly affected in an adverse manner by the time required for the handling of the starting chains.
Conventional systems also have been found to create problems in starting chain manipulation such as increasing the downtime and interrupting the continuity of operations of the continuous casting plant as well.
It is apparent that it is desirable to provide a multiplicity of starting chains which can be provided with heads whose configurations vary in accordance with the different formats to be generated. These chains can be stored in magazines so as to be held ready for use and the magazines or transfer carriages can be provided to enable the individual chain segments with their respective heads to be manipulated at the inception of each casting operation.
Magazines for starting chains generally have, because of the frequently considerable length of the chains, significant volume, and the removal of a chain from the magazine and the introduction into the magazine after use can require not only considerable work but complex ancillary equipment which also occupies considerable space.